Game Theory, Iran and a Nuclear Bomb
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor at New York University who works in applied game theory. Specifically he works in apply game theory to political situations; specifically covered in this article is the question of whether Iran will build a nuclear bomb. Bueno de Mesquita boils political events and questions down to the fact each event is made up of a group of players with an interest in the outcome of the events and each acts as a rational actor in the game. He argues through his models and predictions of political events that predicting an event isn’t about statecraft and politics but really just about game theory–how individuals are going to make decisions. In this article Bueno de Mesquita predicts whether Iran will build a nuclear bomb by creating the parties (players) with an interest, for instance: The United States, Israel, Europe, Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, etc. Then each of his players are given values in 4 categories: 1. What outcome do the players want? 2. How hard will they work to get it? 3. How much clout can they exert on others? 4. How firm is their resolve? In each of these categories each player is given a number out of a fixed arbitrary scale (for instance all players’ values in category one are between 0 and 200, 0 being not wanting the bomb, 200 being wanting to build and test a bomb). He then runs the players through an algorithm based on principles from game theory to come up with a prediction. What was his prediction in 2009 for the Iran bomb question? 118. This means that Iran will be on the edge of developing the bomb, but they won’t in 2010 and that will be the outcome. Well thus far it seems Bueno de Mesquita is right, Iran does not yet have a nuclear bomb, but they still could have one in the works.
This article is relevant to the class because it shows the power of game theory. Sure we talk about it in class and it all makes logical sense, but we don’t know if it actually works in the complicated real world–do players actually act and react in the way predicted by game theory? The answer seems to be yes, at least in some situations such as the one from the article. Of course the algorithms, concepts and scope of the project undertaken by Bueno de Mesquita are for the most part beyond the reach of this class, but it is proof nonetheless. Further his model incorporates the idea that people will work together and shift positions in order to increase their advantage, this is similar to the idea that a triad in a network made up of three negative connections is unstable. This is because two of them will work together even though they do not like each other because its to their advantage to do so.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16Bruce-t.html?
-WocSsa